Are Black Voters Being Ignored By The Democratic Party?

Out of an estimated $225 million, "there is no money in any of that so far articulated for Black-voter mobilization." – Steve Phillips

High turnout among African-American voters was especially crucial in the 2008 and 2012 elections for Democrats, but according to a new article on The Nation.com, Democrats appear to be taking those same voters for granted.

In 2012, 29 percent of all eligible voters were people of color. That number is now around 31 percent.

Priorities USA, the super PAC backing Hillary Clinton,intends to spend $136 million on ads, and only $5.3 million of those dollars will be used for radio advertisements targeting Blacks.

On Tuesday’s edition of NewsOne Now, Roland Martin spoke with Steve Phillips, the author of The Nation’s article, and Cornell Belcher, President of Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies.

Phillips told Martin that out of an estimated $225 million, “there is no money in any of that so far articulated for Black-voter mobilization.” He continued, saying that a small amount of funds are being allocated for Black radio and Black digital outlets, “but zero for mobilization of Black voters.”

Belcher, a top Democratic pollster, said this is about “power and the economics of power.”

“Where aren’t African-Americans in this society not taken for granted?” Belcher said, adding, “This issue is you have a power structure in both political parties where a few people control it – if you control the economics, you have the power and it’s about empowering people of color.”

Belcher proceeded to detail how the lack of investment by both Democrats and Republicans into mobilizing the votes of people of color will yield both parties an unfavorable result.

Belcher said, “Forty-six or more percent of your votes come from people of color, but you’re not empowering people of color within the party – in the longterm that is not tenable, and at some point, the Democratic Party is going to have to come face-to-face with that and the progressive community.”

Martin took particular issue with the lack of spending and investment in Black-voter mobilization, equating the actions of Democratic leadership to “political sharecropping.”

Later, Martin challenged Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC, and the other party leaders to appear on TV One’s NewsOne Now to explain their Black-voter outreach plan, their grassroots plan, as well as their Black-media plan.

“We’re calling every single one of y’all, and the question is going to be: What is your Black plan?”

If the gatekeepers of the Democratic party do not have a plan to reach African-American voters, the NewsOne Now host promised to put them on blast on national television.

Watch Roland Martin, Steve Phillips, Cornell Belcher, and the NewsOne Now panel discuss the lack of investment in Black voters by the Democratic Party in the video clip above.